Alex Scarrow - City of Shadows

All six of them had chorused a deadpan ‘affirmative’.

Abel looked out at the bright sunny morning now, a blue cloudless sky above them. The road was clogged with morning traffic. A world of humans tirelessly going about their everyday business, getting up and going to jobs as if today was just another day. Like program loops executing regardless of the previous day’s extraordinary events. Life going on the same as before.

‘They are behaving as if nothing unusual occurred yesterday,’ said Faith as if reading his mind. ‘Why do you think that is?’

‘A post-trauma behaviour pattern,’ he replied. ‘Access your database. File 3426/344-456. Human Stress Responses.’

She blinked momentarily, digesting a short data entry on how the human mind filled itself with unnecessary repetitive tasks to block out painful thought processes. Denial. She looked at him. ‘Keeping busy so they do not have to confront what they witnessed yesterday?’

‘Correct.’

‘Experience, recollection, is useful data. Denying it makes no sense.’

‘Agreed.’

Little of what they’d experienced of human behaviour over the last twenty-three hours had made any sense. There was a frustrating randomness to human behaviour that made predicting what they were going to do next almost impossible. Like trying to accurately predict the course of a waterdrop down a rain-spattered windowpane.

There was no knowing for certain that the target named Madelaine Carter was taking her team back to her hometown. There was a strong likelihood. A reasonable probability. But no certainty. All they had to support that assumption was the indentation of that word on the jotter pad. Boston.

All they had was a very human thing… a hunch.

Faith suddenly twisted in her seat to face him. ‘I have a signal.’

His eyes locked on her and he nodded. ‘I also just detected it.’

For a second, less than that, they’d both picked up an ident signal just as they’d driven past a turn-off leading to some large square buildings fronted by an enormous car park.

‘An AI ident,’ she said. Her grey eyes locked on his. ‘Software version date — ’

‘2064,’ he finished. Nothing in this time — nothing — other than their primary target could possibly be broadcasting a signal with a future date stamp. ‘It must be them.’

‘Agreed. Take the next turning.’

12 September 2001, New York

Cooper had arrived in New York not long after sunrise and was taken by an NYPD squad car over from the precinct HQ. The plain-clothes police sergeant drew up and stopped in front of a fluttering streamer of crime-scene tape.

‘As far as I can go, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘Feds have it all staked out even though it was a couple of our guys that got shot,’ he added without attempting to hide his disgust.

Cooper thanked him, stepped out and flashed his ID at a uniformed officer guarding the tape line.

A chalk circle on the tarmac marked several bullet cases, and another marked a dark dried puddle of blood.

‘Is there an Agent Damon Grohl on-site?’ he asked the cop.

‘Your FBI buddies are down there somewhere,’ he replied, pointing to the opening of an alleyway beside the base of the towering support for the bridge he’d just been driven over from Manhattan.

‘So what’s down there?’

‘Damned if I know. Nothing us dumb ol’ beat cops are being allowed to see.’

Cooper crossed the intersection, flashed his ID at another uniformed cop standing at the mouth of the alleyway.

‘Yo, Cooper! Coop! Down here!’ a voice barked out from further down the alley.

It was Grohl. Cooper could make out his chunky silhouette standing two-thirds of the way down. Light from crime-scene floodlights was spilling out from some archway across cobblestones and piled rubbish.

‘Damon!’ He began to hesitantly pick his way into the mouth of the alley, sidestepping a discarded spicy chicken wrap. ‘You going to tell me what this is all about yet? I just spent the last four hours driving up here! And I really don’t know what — ’

Grohl waved at him to come on down. ‘I’m not going to shout about it. Come over here.’

Cooper made his way along the alley. At the far end of it he could see a handrail and quayside, a view of the East River and the underbelly of the bridge overhead, receding until it merged with Manhattan beyond. Warm morning sunlight picked out the tops of the skyscrapers along Wall Street. In the sky, several news choppers buzzed around where yesterday the Twin Towers had stood.

He joined Grohl and shook his hand. ‘Sheesh… long journey all the way up from Washington this morning. Every plane in America’s been grounded. I had to damn well drive.’ He looked at his old Academy buddy. ‘Now I was trying to figure out what the hell it is you think you’ve got that made you decide to give me a call.’

Grohl smiled. ‘Come on, Coop, everyone in the Agency knows you’re the custodian of all that weird X Files stuff.’ He slapped Cooper affectionately on the arm and grinned, a knowing boy-have-I-got-something-for-you expression. ‘You won’t be disappointed.’

They were standing beside a brick archway; a metal shutter door was wound three-quarters of the way up, but still low enough that they both had to duck down to look under. ‘What’s in here?’

‘Last night, early hours of the morning actually, there was that double cop killing. You probably saw the evidence markers out there on the intersection?’ Cooper nodded.

‘Eyewitness saw the whole thing. Said they emerged from this alleyway, two of them; one male, one female, mid-twenties, white, tall, athletic. And get this — ’ he grinned — ‘both as bald as buddhas. Walked right up, assaulted the first cop, took his gun off him and shot him and his partner dead, execution style. Two to the chest, one to the head. Then calm as you please they both got into the squad car and drove it away.’

‘Sheeesh. Linked to the Trade Center? Terrorists?’

‘That’s what we thought. That’s why we got handed this one so quickly. Follow me.’ He ducked down, led the way inside. ‘Precinct cops were first on the scene. They searched the alleyway and found this archway left wide open.’

Cooper ducked under after him and stood up inside.

‘And this is where it all gets very weird.’

Cooper looked around. The place looked as if it had been burgled or rifled through. A mess of things pulled out and strewn across the floor. He noted the bunk beds, the table, armchairs. Kettle, pizza boxes, burger wrappers and drinks cans. ‘What? This some sort of drugs den? A gang crib?’

Grohl shrugged. ‘No. Not narcotics, not even a trace. But we did find this.’ He pointed down to spatters and smears of dried blood on the floor, each mark highlighted with a chalk circle and an evidence number. ‘Something went down in here. A fight. Crime-scene pathologist reckons there’s enough blood on the floor to suggest another possible homicide. Two dead cops out there and another possible killing in here. But no body. Anyway, we got handed this ball because it might… might… have something to do with the terror attack.’

Grohl beckoned Cooper to follow him across the floor towards a desk cluttered with wires and circuit boards. He picked up something sitting in a plastic evidence bag.

‘And this little beauty is why I thought I’d give you a call, old friend.’ He passed it to Cooper. ‘Don’t worry, it’s already been dusted for prints. You can get it out and take a look at it.’

Cooper reached into the bag and pulled out a smooth, fist-sized piece of glossy black plastic and chrome. ‘What is this thing? Some sort of digital organizer?’